After Mr. Sewell had ceased speaking Judge Cooley of Michigan was called upon by the President and delivered an entertaining five minute speech from manuscript.

President Eliot spoke as follows:- Mr. President and gentlemen, it did not use to be the custom for the President of Harvard College to have anything to do with professional schools. I remember the first time I went into the Law School building after I was elected President. It was in the autumn of 1869, a few weeks after the term began. I stopped at the door that many of you remember, the first door on the right after getting there, the outside door, and I opened it and received the usual salutation of the ever genial Governor Washburn. [Applause.] "Oh, how are you? Take a chair," this without looking at me at all. When he saw who it was he held up both his hands with his favorite gesture and said, "I declare, I never before saw the President of Harvard College in this building." Still I proposed to make myself acquainted with the needs and plans of all the departments, and of the Law School among them as one of the most important. The next winter Prof. Parsons resigned the Dane Professorship, which became vacant. Then I remembered that when I was a junior in college in the year 1851 I used to go to the room of a friend of mine in the Divinity School, long since dead, and there I heard a young man talk who was making the notes to Parsons on Contracts. He was generally eating his supper at the time, which usually consisted of a bowl of brown bread and milk. I was a mere boy, I was only 18 years old, but it was given me to understand that I was listening to a man of genius. And in the year 1870, I brought that man from New York and got him to become a a Professor in our Law School. That was Prof. Langdell [Applause]. Well, then he told me a great many of the things he has told you this afternoon. I have heard all that before. He told me that law was a science; I was quite prepared to believe it. He told me that the way to study science was to go to the original sources. I knew that was true, for I had been brought up in the science of chemistry myself, and one of the first principles in a physical science is never to take a fact out of treatises but to go to the original memoir of the discoverer.

So with great patience in the course of fifteen or sixteen years during which Prof. Langdell has been characterized for his earnest devotion as a Professor to certain lines of policy and to the zeal and intelligence with which his work was accomplished, building on all that was good in the past, is due the fact that this school has been converted into a scientific School of Law. I think there is no change in the University which I have seen during the last 17 years which is more satisfactory to all those who have taken part in it, or more important with reference to the interests of the community, than this change that I have seen in the Law School. Four or five other professors added their labors, and if "genius is a remarkable capacity for work" they are all men of genius. I do not think it necessary for me, the only layman present, holding the same position in every faculty of the University-I am always a layman wherever I go-it it not necessary for me to say more of the school that we all love or of its history. So far as I have known it no event has been more agreeable to me during the last sixteen years, than the institution of this Association. For it adds a force to this school and insures a future prosperity. It adds a force without which no professional school can greatly prosper or greatly support the profession which it feeds.

President Eliot's speech was greeted with warm applause. Gen. Alexander Lawton of Georgia, a graduate of 1842 then spoke, alluding to the influence of the Law on the South during the late war. He was followed by Geo. Q. Shattuck, Esq., who talked of the legal profession in relation to the early history of Harvard College. At the mention of the name of Edward Austin by President Carter, three hearty cheers were given for the generous donor of Austin Hall. Mr. F. W. Hackett of the Washington Bar was called upon and made a few brief and witty remarks. Prof. Gray, said a word or two in regard to the School, and Judge Hoar gave a few reminiscences from his past experience while studying law in the School.

The exercises of the day were brought to a close with three rousing cheers under the leadership of the Chief Marshal, Mr. Roger Walcott.